Cyngor Gwynedd Council CEO Apologises For Children's Services.

In June 2019, we received a letter of apology from Dilwyn O Williams, Chief Executive of Cyngor Gwynedd Council.

Mr Williams confirms the department has accepted the recommendations as stated in the Ombudsman's 2019 report.

He then apologises to us all as "a family on behalf of Gwynedd council for all the failings that have been noted within the Ombudsman's report". 

He goes on to apologise on behalf of the Children's department for the delay in providing a response to our complaint.

Mr Williams then apologises on behalf of a senior manager. He writes that the officer has asked for "his sincerest apologies to be passed to us as a family and his reassurance that this was not his intention to offend you as a family".

The Chief Executive adds - "Furthermore, I would also like to apologise for the failure to review *the* Child In Need plan" and ends asking for acceptance of "this sincere apology."


The letter is short and gives no detail of the failings of the children's department and its complaints department. Nor does it mention the behaviour of the senior managers in their treatment of the Independent Investigator in order to whitewash and sanitise the final, final Report.

Now a month later the CEO was in attendance at the Cabinet meeting of the 23rd July, 2019.
This meeting was to receive the Children and Family's Annual Complaints Handling Report, authored by Marian Parry Hughes. Mrs Hughes report contains anoma lies just like the last report (and the one before that and the one before that) but that is for another post.

The Cabinet member with responsibility for the Children's SS department, Dilwyn Morgan, had been sent a copy of the Ombudsman's report for his attention and consideration in June but at the time of writing has not replied. Nor did he attend this meeting where he should have presented the Report.

The Chief Executive made no mention of his letter of apology to the meeting nor did he reference the Ombudsman's report. He did make reference to the Ombudsman on a couple of occasions but not in regard to the report.

The meeting can be viewed here -
https://gwynedd.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/434961
(Copy and paste the address into your browser)

As I write there is a problem with the english translation feed so it is only available in welsh but I am confident that this will be fixed shortly.
 

Always Someone Else's Fault - Cyngor Gwynedd Council.

Paragraph 40 of the Ombudsman for Wales 2019 Report into Cyngor Gwynedd Children's Services -

"...However, the Council was of the view that it was not required to share any draft with
Mr & Mrs A. It said that the Regulations did not specify this. In support of its
view, it said that it had sought information from other councils in North Wales
about their practice, which accorded with the Council’s position.

The Council said that it was the IIO that had requested a meeting to discuss the
Second draft. The Council had referred the IIO to documents already
provided to review those inaccuracies it had pointed out. It said that ‘extra
copies’ of those documents were provided to her.

Only one additional (new) item was produced, which the Council had initially felt to be irrelevant to the IIO’s investigation, as it related to an earlier complaint made in 2010. The
Council said that the sole purpose of the meeting was to ensure the report’s
accuracy. It was not an attempt to influence the IIO.

The Council added that it had to chase the IIO to obtain the Final report. It was not sent until
11.13pm on 2 January 2018 (despite assurance it would reach Officer 1 by 29 December 2017).
This was ‘...unfortunate and highly disappointing that
the IIO’s reluctance to respond to [Officer 1’s] requests for a corrected
draft...during December further added to the delay’.
                                                  ************************

So Gwynedd Council told the Ombudsman that other County Council's in North Wales do not share Independent Investigation 'draft' Reports. I wonder if proof of this was provided to the Ombudsman? In any case, the usual procedure is that the Council accept the IO's Independent report and write a response letter and if they do not agree with findings and recommendations to say so in that response letter, not seek to change or remove things from the IO's report before they accept it.

The IO and IP stated that this course of action is NOT usual.

How can complainants challenge any inaccuracies in a Report if they are not allowed sight before publication ? I am astonished that the Ombudsman permitted this 'excuse' without challenge - especially as we pointed out that the Report does contain one inaccuracy that we would like correcting and asked what was to be done to correct this.
The question was ignored.

Gwynedd Council like to blame anyone but themselves, but to claim to the Ombudsman that the Council had to chase the IO to obtain the Final Report is disingenuous in light of the fact that this was the third report that she had submitted.

Bearing in mind, the Ombudsman was kept informed of the Council's behaviour during this time it is confusing the Ombudsman has not made more of this point. The Ombudsman even attempted to speed up the process by writing to the council to ask what had happened to their 'delayed response'.

A process that should take 25 working DAYS took 7 MONTHS.

And who is Officer 1 requesting a 'corrected draft' ?
Highly disappointing ? For whom ?

Something is very wrong within Gwynedd council.